


a riemannian landscape of labyrinths

by dancingwiththewind (highfaenyx)



Series: queens and kingdoms [1]
Category: Labyrinth (1986)
Genre: Character Study, F/M, the one where Sarah is a physicist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:56:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26138497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/highfaenyx/pseuds/dancingwiththewind
Summary: but she was a queen, and her kingdom was whatever she wished it to be.
Relationships: Jareth & Sarah Williams, Jareth/Sarah Williams
Series: queens and kingdoms [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2029450
Comments: 7
Kudos: 46





	a riemannian landscape of labyrinths

Sarah has always loved fairytales; loved the course of them, the meaning, the lessons. Perhaps, she hadn’t truly learned hers until she winded up being a heroine herself, but still, she knew them by heart: the prelude, the outline of the grand adventure and — the ending.

Happily ever after or something else, there was always an ending, a coda, a finale, a resolve.

But no tale in the world tells what happens after the hero defies the villain and the peace is restored.

The final battles, the hardships, the trials — they are described in full colour and detail; but what happens next?

What happens when all that has been taken is returned, and you find yourself exactly where you’ve started, seemingly not changed and yet so, so different — she did not know that.

She had gone down a hero’s path, made friends, defeated her enemy, returned her brother and restored the usual flow of things; but after a brush of adrenaline and brief satisfaction she felt unexpectedly empty.

For there was a difference too vast between the Champion of Labyrinth she came to be and a pathetic teenager she once had been.

Sarah Williams stood in the middle of the nursery with her brother in her arms, and for the first time in her life she truly felt that she didn’t belong. _I fought so hard to escape the Labyrinth_ , she thought, _just to find myself lost in my own world_.

She played a game, and she won; the last words she said to Jareth — no, _Goblin King_ , she corrected herself — still rang in her head.

You have no power over me, she proclaimed mere minutes ago.

My kingdom is as great as yours.

Her kingdom.

Her world, she’d meant. Her family, her house, her books — all of it, and she had not understood that she’d had a kingdom of her own – before, when she had been a teenager still.

Thirteen hours have passed, and she realised that she indeed had a kingdom (if one may call a world of mortals so) and that thing – her kingdom – had borders. That you could make a step away, right, left, or even backwards, and find yourself in a place you had no idea existed; somewhere mortals only get to only by sheer chance or by someone else’s design.

Sarah heard an owl howling somewhere near the window; it sent shivers down her spine. Her family lived near a small park – a dozen of bushes and trees, nothing really special, but the summer night darkness made it look like an endless forest; and though owls were not that uncommon in the area, after all she went through the least she could do is afford being just a bit paranoid – about owls in particular. The chill running through her veins did not frighten her; she felt something dark and alluring forming in her chest, though.

Perhaps she became addicted to the rush of adrenalin running down her veins. Like she would be up for another challenge.

Like she wouldn’t mind another round.

Of their game.

***

Sometimes it is so easy to forget, and sometimes it is too easy to remember, and sometimes to forget and to remember mean the same, different sides of a coin which value you know all too well.

As time passed, Sarah forgot – some of it. She did no longer know the colour of Labyrinth skies and the branches and leaves on its walls, could not recall the crossroads and turns she’s taken.

But the journey wasn’t about memorising the Labyrinth, was it? She doubted even its master knew it to all its extent; the Labyrinth had a mind of its own.

What she never forgot – were her words, and the person she said them to.

Sarah didn’t mind that memory staying. Actually, she didn’t mind all of her memories staying where they always were — but human memory is short and faulty, so unlike one fae possess, and things you once could easily recall become shallow with time.

Sarah had a kingdom to build anyway.

***

She once wanted to become an actress — to be like her famous mother, so that maybe one day she would recognise her daughter and finally accept Sarah.

Take her back in a warm embrace, say that she is proud.

Past Sarah could have hoped for that to happen.

But now Sarah knew it was no more than a mere illusion in her mind; even the ballroom where Jareth and danced had been more real than this dream.

And Sarah wanted her kingdom to be alive and strong, and not illusory. Wearing a mask is, after all, nothing more than hiding behind it; and Jareth, the master of his realm, would not, did not hide.

 _Why should I_ , she thought then.

So she left all of her acting classes, stopped going to the auditions, tossed away all the books on acting she had. In their place, came books on numbers and patterns in them, black holes and cats which neither dead nor alive.

Her father and stepmother were surprised, to say the least. _No acting classes, then,_ her father asked her, brows furrowed in confusion. _You are a girl, acting would suit you better. Maths? Leave it to boys,_ they said.

But Sarah did not care.

***

Sarah lived, lived and did not dwell on dreams — even those which do not feel like dreams at all.

She decided to study — not the artificial stories she would whip up in her head, but another ones; those which strived to model the world. She chose physics, and maths, and everybody around her thought she was crazy.

 _This child_ , they whispered behind her back, _pretty enough to handle theatre, but math? She is simply not good enough. All she has on her mind are dresses and boys anyways, and parties, and stockings._

_Not good enough._

The words would have haunted her before; but the person she once had been had turned to ashes on the crossroads of the Labyrinth.

Sarah knew she was good enough to run the damn thing; to defeat the evil king and to win her brother back. If she could do that, then everything else would also be possible — if she wished.

And wishes were real — for those who did not dwell on them.

Sarah was mocked, was humiliated for her newfound passion for numbers and equations and theories, just as she had been mocked before, for her fairy tales and stories and acting: the Goblin King, or Isaac Newton, people just don’t see the difference, do they?

But she was a queen, and her kingdom was whatever she wished it to be.

***

Connecting the dots, swimming in an ocean of unconnected values and theories, ships old and new; ones which look polished, yet sank as soon as you do as much as step on them; others old and cranky, but still holding onto their ways. Sarah enjoyed her stories, her theorems and axioms and assumptions and everything that they were made of, paving her path through her undergrad.

She moved across the country to start her graduate studies, and gave a way to a passing thought of dropping _him_ off her trail. Whether she truly wanted him off her trail, she didn’t know; the thought of him, chasing her, however, made her shiver in an unexpected thrill, the same one she felt when on a brink of a new scientific insight.

_Addiction._

Sarah was an addict of an unparalleled intensity, and she was all too aware of that.

She was a loner; an occasional conversation with a roommate or a colleague would suffice, would bring a smile upon her lips. It wasn’t something she needed, though. Stories, her kingdom of nature and numbers was always enough. Almost always, at least.

When it wasn’t, she drank coffee to remember, and wine — to forget. She put on a playlist of odd and old melodies, more fit for a last century ballroom, and absentmindedly swayed to them.

She thought that maybe on one of these days she would figure out Labyrinth and how space and time curve in Jareth’s realm, and that was something that kept her moving forward when frustration flooded her senses and her mind.

***

She was a loner.

It bothered her, at times; at times, she was happy in her solitude.

And at times, it seemed to her that the shadow in the corner of her eye was always there. Not disturbing, but comforting, and never leaving her alone in her loneliness.

One day, he walked into the bar where she was having her usual drink, leaned on the counter next to her and ordered a glass of red.

They drank in silence, their elbows colliding, sending shivers down Sarah’s spine every time. He didn’t change a bit, and she wasn’t surprised.

It became their ritual.

“Who is that chap?” Asked her the bartender one day. “Couldn’t hoax a single word about himself out of the man.”

She smiled against herself. “An old friend.”

***

_Your record is outstanding, but we are looking for someone .. more stable._

_You know, emotions and maternity leave…_

_Have you heard of a woman professor stirring up a harassment scandal in the chemistry?_

_Application denied._

And — for the first time in a very, very long time — Sarah hugged her knees and truly broke down. She felt like the weight of the world itself was crushing her, how she tried and tried and tried to defy that _life is not fair, you are not good enough._ She was just a girl in a world of men. How stupid of her was to think that she could change that.

The figure in the corner of her eye stepped out of the shadow; in that moment, there was nothing she wanted more but to embrace him and never let go — like she had wanted so many times when they were sharing a drink in silence. But she didn’t move, and he stood still, and her desire melted into anger.

“I am not good enough, Jareth. I was never good enough, so why are you here?” She spitted out the words, immediately regretting resentment in her voice and her words. He didn’t deserve them; she did.

“Don’t you understand, Sarah?” He said quietly. “I don’t care. I never did.”

He took a step towards her. “I will be with you — always.”

She felt tears starting to spur in the corners of her eyes.

“Even if you don’t choose me.” He took one more step. “Even if you grow old and wither.”

“Maybe even beyond.” He whispered, so close to her that she could smell oaks and rain and gravity, everything that Labyrinth was, no, everything that Jareth was, and Sarah thought her chest would almost explode of how much tenderness she felt.

Then he wiped a tear off her cheek, his touch gentle and light, leaving a wet smudge of mascara under her eye, and she gave up.

“I have tried so hard, Jareth,” she whispered. “So hard.”

“I know, Sarah.”

She bowed her head, leaning her temple on his chest, feeling the warmth radiating from his body, and, among a million of other things, she understood — she was quite content with staying this way forever.

The game they played — it would always lead them here, she realised.

“I don’t have a kingdom to offer you, Jareth.”

“Even if you truly think so - I have one already anyway. Feel free to take it.” She could never resist the humour in his voice, could she?

“I am not good enough.”

Jareth squeezed her tighter in his embrace. “They have no power over you.”

“Repeat after me, my Queen.”

_They have no power over me._

And she was the Labyrinth’s champion. Nobody had power over her.

***

She didn’t know what awaited her.

She took a chair position in a small town university — not famous, but respected, and far away from the big politics of big science, and that brought her peace.

Sarah Williams would spend years and years and years, staring at equations of different kinds, testing different axioms, climbing a ladder of numbers and concepts. She would find an answer, eventually, and become a household name, a woman who has laid the foundation of the theory of everything.

She would do all that, days at her office desk, nights on the balcony chair in her apartment; coffee or wine in her hands.

A passionate, agitated speaker, and an engaged researcher, she remained single and childless; she remained a loner to the eyes of everyone who did not know how to look.

Those who did — mostly her students, who adored and respected her, but never tried to pursue her, for there was something unattainably regal about her gaze and her posture — would often see a man casually entering her office, peeking over Sarah’s crouched shoulder, two cups of coffee in his hands. They seemed to argue a lot behind the glass doors of her cabinet, both articulative and driven, painting equations in chalk on her blackboard.

Some rumours claimed he was a tenured professor from astrophysics; some suspected him an arts teacher (he was dressed rather extravagantly) with a newfound passion in theoretical physics; oddly enough, his face would remain a blur in the memories of everyone who would witness his visits. In the end, no one was really even sure the two shared anything except for their heated scientific debates.

What they didn’t see — were warm arms hugging Sarah in the nights she spent chasing the geometrics of spacetime in a chair on her balcony; her spine leaned on a firm chest. They didn’t see Jareth and Sarah sharing half-smiles and glasses of wine, arguments of life, of politics, art and science resulting in Jareth’s soft chuckles and Sarah’s amused annoyance, and fights ending in tangled sheets and neck bruises.

Sarah remained a loner —but Jareth was one, too, and it was so much more fun to be loners together.

Her brother, when visiting, adored Jareth. Sarah expected no less from a boy (a man, she corrected herself) who was once an amused baby in her King’s arms. Tobias, after a couple of drinks, confessed to her that there was something eerily familiar about her partner, _maybe I’ve met him before_? Sarah just smiled. _Don’t be ridiculous, brother._

_Maybe I tell you one day._

_***_

When a colleague complimented her on how young she looked, fifty and looking no older than twenty-nine, Sarah felt for the first time that her time, which was supposed to be running out, has frozen still and she never noticed.

“Did you stop my time?” She demanded from Jareth, her voice on a brick of boiling anger, because how dare he do this without any consent, that is not a decision he can make for her, and — Jareth laughed for good ten minutes, and her anger dissolved, confusion rising instead.

“I am not even half so brave to do so. You’d give me hell,” he said, clearly amused. She was staring at him with a blank expression. _Then how —_

His eyes softened, meeting hers. “My queen,” he said gently. “After all this time, and still?”

He looked at Sarah from across her table. “You’ve done something impossible, numerous times, over and over again, and the thing you are surprised with is that you are immortal?”

“Me? Immortal? Doing impossible?” She was rambling. “Jareth, I didn’t do anything impossible. You are the impossible one, the one with magic and labyrinths and illusions, and --”

He shut her up with a single pointed gaze, waving his hand over a pile of books and papers on her table. “And what is all this?”

“Maths, science, logic, physics, I don’t know, Jareth, but this is no magic!”

“Does it really matter if one weaves illusions or strings of Peano arithmetic? Does it matter if one bends spacetime or writes down a new metric for a Riemannian manifold?”

“You tell me,” she said.

“Oh, I gladly will,” he said. “It doesn’t make any difference.”

“Oh, Sarah, I create things, yes. But you — you strive to understand how they are created, and that is magic enough.”

Jareth looked at her, the way he always looked at her, the way only him ever looked at her — like he saw her for what she truly were. Maybe he did.

_And maybe this is it._

_Her kingdom._

Her numbers, her theories, her intuition; her stories of a universe cold and empty and full of observers; a universe collapsing in every moment of time and eternally evolving into something new.

And that was enough.

***

She looked at Jareth, still asleep in their bed, in the early quiet hours of Sunday morning. She loved how chaotic he looked, even in his sleep -- but she knew, better than anyone, that there was an order and a pattern to his chaos, like there were a pattern and an order to the Labyrinth itself.

Like a pattern to anything — and she saw it, a magic in her gaze, a formulae in her mind.

“I will be with you, my King,” she whispered. “As long as you have me, here or in your realm.”

It wasn’t a finale, she thought. There was never a finale, only a continuous journey along the merciless arrow of time, and that was something better than just the end.

**Author's Note:**

> Sarah becomes a physicist in this one, and I've put a tiny bit of myself in her. 
> 
> As always, kudos and comments are welcome!


End file.
